


nightmares (real as the here and now)

by akelios



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mind Control, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelios/pseuds/akelios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is awake when it starts. He knows that, hopes that, and uses it as his baseline later when he comes awake again.</p><p>Spoilers for the Avengers movie - please don't read if you haven't seen it and wish to remain unspoiled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nightmares (real as the here and now)

He is awake when it starts. He knows that, hopes that, and uses it as his baseline later when he comes awake again. Clint doesn't question what it might mean if he _wasn't_ awake when it started, if the Tesseract coming to life and birthing Loki and madness into his world were things that never happened. So Clint knows that the Tesseract came to life, that he made the mistake of coming down to earth from his nest and that his last moments of _awake_ , of awareness and decision are filled with gunfire and a power that burns blue and familiar after all the months watching Selvig work with the cube.

Clint is awake to get his ass handed to him, to hear a smooth, cultured voice come from the pale and shaking creature (not a _man_ , from the first he knew better than to think that Loki was anything so benign as a _man_ ). Loki's voice reaching in and rubbing against the inside of his skull even as he twists Clint's arm nearly to the breaking point, telling him that he has _heart_ just before Loki rips it out of him.

The spear burns him, fire turning his lungs to ash, ice freezing the blood in his veins. The pain never ends, until it does and he is no longer awake, no longer alive or in control. He is asleep, watching, pinned by arrow shafts of blue light that burn but never consume. The light fills him with _Loki_ , with purpose and it leaves no room for anything else. Thought is necessary only in that it will allow him to serve his purpose, to serve Loki. 

Clint is asleep, moving and speaking but asleep nonetheless. He commands Loki's forces, obeys without question, driven by Loki's voice curled around his soul. Loki, the center of this sleep numbed and senseless universe he finds himself in, Loki staggers through their bolt hole, throwing off Selvig's concern and directing the man back to the Tesseract, back to the secrets of the universe contained there.

Clint looks at the Tesseract, glowing and pulsing with life and sees blood, sees choices and lives that he has destroyed. He sees a life, the life he spent awake and in pain, at the direction of the wrong masters. He mourns, briefly, not for the lives that he took but that they were taken in the service of the unworthy.

Loki is worthy, Clint knows this with every pulse of light inside of him, piercing him; and all Clint can do is wish, idly, sleepily, without any true force or regret, that Loki had found him sooner. That he had been pulled from that false sense of purpose and life down into the cool cavern of true purpose sooner. When it is quiet but for Selvig's mad mutterings Clint makes his way to Loki's side, to care for his master, for his _god_.

Loki, his eyes dark and glinting with exhaustion, shifts on the stone of the stairs and Clint feels...not worry, how can you worry about someone like Loki? A being of such pure power and purpose that it changes everything around them in their image. So he doesn't _worry_ about Loki, but he does want to serve, to ease Loki's burden in any way he can. Clint drops to his knees beside him, the pain of the hard landing a distant throb that is quickly subsumed into the background cold burn of the power that drives and consumes him.

“Do you need anything, Sir?”

“I-” Loki rubs a hand over his face, pain pinching it down to sharp lines that Clint wants to touch, to see if they will cut him. He has a dream image of the edge of Loki's cheek leaving a line of brilliant red across his palm. He knows that he wouldn't feel it. “Tell me about them, your former compatriots.”

Clint balks, thrashes in his sleep as it were, hands tugging against the shafts through his palms. It does nothing. He still, with the same uncaring focus, begins to speak. He tells Loki everything, _everything_. When he is done, there is nothing left and Clint feels hollow, as though a slight breeze will pick him up and carry him away, if only Loki will let him go. But he won't. He needs Clint, at least for now, and that purpose is all that holds Clint together.

He sleeps through blood and screams, through explosions and death that he rains down on people who were his coworkers if never his friends. Clint sees it all through the twisting glass of smoke and light. There is a roaring, somewhere deep below him, unimportant because it is a part of the plan, though not his part.

His part is death and distraction, completing the mirage that Loki had been caught and imprisoned in the Hulk's cage. If Clint could laugh, if that were a useful thing to him in this dreaming, sleeping state of driven purpose, he would. The thought that something like Loki could be so easily caught, so easily contained is insanity and he feels (again), blessed that Loki chose him to free or he would be among the sheep even now.

Then there is Natasha, beautiful and bloodied, and they dance. Blood and blades and it is the least he can do, the Loki part of him thinks, to kill her himself. Better that than to let her fall to her death when the monster takes the Helicarrier down as he will. The Clint part of him, the part that sleeps and watches and can do nothing but what the Loki part wills, screams her name. 

He is asleep and terrified inside of himself, calm and vicious on the outside, on the Loki side, as he tries to kill her. 

Then there is pain, throbbing deep in his brain, his heart thudding out of time with it. The shafts loosen, he can breathe again, thoughts crackling and burbling to the surface. “'Tasha?” Confusion, not because he doesn't remember what he has been doing while he sleeps, but that he should be awake and asleep at the same time, Loki still buried deep into him while the certainty is gone, flitting around the edges of his control. Before it can come back there is Natasha's fist and blessed, true darkness.

“I don't have a window...” Clint wakes again, the remnants of Loki clinging to him, dissolving as he shakes and burns. He thrashes against the restraints, wanting them to cut him, to prove that this is real. That he's awake and not asleep anymore.

“You have to calm down, Clint. Even out.” Tasha is still there, he hadn't been sure that she would be, that they would let her stay with him after everything that he'd done. Clint should have known better. Whether Fury wanted Tasha at his side or not, she would be there. He's grateful.

He tries to tell her what it was like, he thinks that she might be the only other person who could ever understand, but he's not sure that he gets it out. That he has the words for it. That the words exist in any language anywhere. To have Loki inside of him, through him, perfect and consuming. _Worthy_ , he remembers thinking. Worthy of his loyalty, deserving of the deaths that Clint caused in his name.

Clint doesn't realize that he's babbling, thinking he could sleep if only he could kill Loki, excise him from his soul that way, until Tasha sits down on the bed beside him, her hand pressing him back onto the thin mattress.

“Get some rest, Clint. Ease-”

“I can't. I'm-” He slides out from under her, knows that she lets him go. As shaky as he is, as sickened as he is at his loss of self, of control, she could stop him easily. “I can't sleep. Not yet.” He backs into the small bathroom, watching everything without looking at anything. “I just need a minute here.”

She frowns, but lets him go. There's nothing sharp left in the bathroom anyway, he knows.

Then the Captain is there and Clint steps up because if he has to stay here, stay in the infirmary he'll go mad, or sleep, and they may be the same thing. The battle, adrenaline singing through his body, alive and awake entirely until he spots Loki. Nausea and something like longing claw at his chest. He looses the arrow and is disappointed though not surprised when it fails to kill Loki.

He'll just have to try harder. And then the chaos engulfs him again, blood and alien screams and it's at least familiar. It keeps the exhaustion and the shakes at bay.

When it's over, finally, truly over, Loki in custody for real this time, bound with chains and magic sent down by Thor's father, Stark drags them to his fucking schwarma place. Tasha wants to get back to the Helicarrier. They both – they _all_ \- deserve some rest but Clint chimes in with Stark, claiming hunger and too much excitement, too much adrenaline.

When they can't drag out the awkward dinner any longer they go home, for certain values of the term, and Clint goes to his quarters on the Helicarrier. He should sleep. He doesn't. He does paperwork, works his way through the pile that's been building in his inbox for three weeks. When that's gone he makes his way through the halls to the gym and the practice range. There's damage there and he cleans it up first, his muscles burning and screaming. Overtaxed, overextended, overexerted. Overtired. He's afraid to sleep. Afraid that he will wake up and be asleep again, Loki's hand in his hair, voice at his ear. Blood dripping from his hands.

He works until he bleeds, until he can't feel the bow in his hands, nocking arrows by instinct and habit more than anything else. Clint still hits the target, every time. He imagines Loki's face, his eye the bullseye. Clint moves to the heavy bag, a scream lodged deep in his throat as he kills Loki a hundred times, until his vision blurs, his knees shake and give out, dropping him to the floor.

“This isn't good for you.” Clint looks up and Natasha is kneeling beside him, a water bottle dangling from her fingers. He pushes himself up and takes the bottle from her, drinks deeply, the water cold and stinging on the way down.

“Pot. Kettle.” Clint coughs and lays back down. The floor is actually comfortable, after a while. “I've dragged you out of here enough nights.”

“True.” Tasha sits beside him, her leg hot against his through their uniforms. “It's a lot like Kananga. This whole mess.”

He stares at the ceiling, jaw clenched tight against the yawn. “You and I remember Kananga differently, Tasha.”

“The explosion wasn't our fault. It was out of our control. Like this.” She pokes him gently, in a spot that remains mostly unbruised. Clint lifts his hands to stare at them, the blood still trickles slowly from open and raw scrapes and cuts.

“I still see their faces. Hear them screaming. Tell me that you can't.”

“I remember them.” It's as close as Tasha will ever come to an admission of the nightmares. Neither of them sleep well, it's why they don't try to sleep together. One of them would wake up dead. “It's only worse when you put it off. You get too tired to wake up easily.”

“I know.” Clint rests one hand on Tasha's knee, squeezing it with numb fingers.

“I'll wake you.” She doesn't say that she'll guard him, it doesn't need to be said. Clint closes his eyes and surrenders, trusts that Tasha will bring him out of it before it gets too bad.


End file.
